History of SPR Center

Satisfaction Performance Research Center (SPR Center) was founded in June 1978 as a research and consulting firm specializing in using employee surveys to enhance individual satisfaction and organization performance. This work had its roots in the University of Minnesota's Industrial Relations Center, where SPR Center's founders conducted basic and applied research as part of the Laboratory for Applied Research on Individual Satisfaction and Organization Effectiveness (ISOE Lab).

From the very beginning the work of SPR Center combined the precision of employee opinion measurement with the organization development power that extensive survey feedback provides. However, in the late 80s an increasing number of our client organizations were experiencing tremendous change. This change compelled our clients to rethink and reinvent their organizations while compelling SPR Center to develop a new genre of surveys emphasizing agendas related to change readiness and facilitation — now known as Change Facilitation Surveys.

In the early 90s the agenda of organizational change went a step further as organizations defined and implemented bold new business strategies which called for culture changes and aligned HR strategies. These new strategies and related changes called for greater management and employee involvement in their definition and especially in their deployment. Again SPR Center shifted the emphasis of its surveys to engaging employees in a dialogue about the new directions and the manner in which these directions were being implemented — an approach now known as Strategy Alignment Surveys.

As SPR Center continues through the 21st century, we retain the strengths from the past while continuously developing skills, techniques and tools that help our clients meet the challenges they are yet to face. We look forward to what comes next.